


transatlanticism

by aosc



Category: Bleach, Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-07
Updated: 2015-07-07
Packaged: 2018-04-05 14:19:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4183053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aosc/pseuds/aosc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grimmjow recognizes Abarai; looming shoulders, thick red hair and wires of black ink covering him from neck to wrists to waist. He doesn’t recognize the other kid, save for his name, apparently (he does do a double take, but Ōmaeda had said Kurosaki, alright). He’s gaunt and gangly; thin legs, wiry arms. Orange hair. Grimmjow raises an eyebrow from where he’s parked himself at the back of the crowd of curious onlookers just at the inside of the Anchorage Shatterdome’s Combat Room.</p>
            </blockquote>





	transatlanticism

**Author's Note:**

> this was supposed to be like, 2k. somehow, it became a knocking-on-16k monster. heh. sorry not sorry. (in the process of rewriting this into something which reads smoother, 2 years into the future.)

* * *

 

The film crackes with static over Urahara’s giant primary screen, casting flickers across the circular room. It reflects in the spread tanks, bubbling and fizzing, and in the constructions spilling over with cables and control panels. In the dull of the chalkboard at the far end of the room, thickly drawn with dusty equations and primary numbers, clustered to the point where they’re rendered unreadable to anyone with merely a normal calculus degree.

 

Grimmjow kicks a small loose nail rattling across the floor. He crosses his ankles, and whistles as annoying a tune as he can recall on short notice. He thinks it’s the theme song from _King Kong_. Nobody turns their head. Urahara is twisting levers and pushing buttons across the wide span of of his control panel, muttering about attempting to stabilize the picture.

 

Grimmjow changes his tune. _Jaws_. It’s sort of morbidly fitting, six years into the Kaiju War. Morbid as the man whose lab he’s currently in. The luminescent tanks lining the room holds conserved remains and pale intestines. Farther off in the room is a slab of dried Kaiju meat slapped down on a disinfected tray. Grimmjow represses a shudder.

 

After what seems like an eternity of Steven Speilberg’s great fat white shark attacking people in the pond, the image stabilizes, and the thin slice of flimsy camera work that they’re waiting to watcj, starts unfolding. Finally.

 

Grimmjow cocks his head sideways. He studies the vaguely moving film. A calm bobbing of weeds in the sepia-tinted camerawork slides by. The grey body of a flat fish with protruding antennas sprouting from its face slithers past. Nothing extraordinary happens.

 

“I’m sorry, Professors Brain,” Grimmjow says, and peers closer at the screen, “But what am I supposed to be watching?”

 

Yoruichi turns from where she’s leaning over Urahara’s shoulder. She shushes him. “We’re watching a live feed from the  _Submerger_ , Jaws. I’ve told you exactly three times in the past hour and a half.”

 

“English, please and thank you.” Grimmjow flaps his left hand, inspects a nail, now half healed from having been broken off whilst sparring with the fresh recruits earlier this week. Nobody who’d really been worth it and time, though Kuchiki, who occasionally joins from active duty, does throw a mean punch and block.

 

Yoruichi rolls her eyes, but opts for ignoring him. She turns back to the feed. “Captain,” she says, “Permission to speak.”

 

“Permission granted, Dr. Shihōin.”

 

Captain Kurosaki stands just to Grimmjow’s right. He’s intensely focused on the feed, following the vague shapes of what creatures Grimmjow assumes are nature’s true oddities, able to survive at 35,000 feet below sea level. Nothing that’s so far piqued his own interest. After all, they’ve seen the real deal, and it ain’t of this kind of measly plankton.

 

Urahara taps something on a virtual touch pad, and the opacity and sharpness of the feed increases. Something pulses in the water. Grimmjow squints, leaning forward on the pads of his feet.

 

“Captain, this is a live feed of Challenger Deep, the Mariana Trench’s deepest point, located in the Federated States of Micronesia, cirka 300 kilometers northeast of Guam,” says Yoruichi, half turned towards their little military gathering. She pauses. The feed moves, slowly, as though swallowed down on a tongue of sand, flickering in slow motion. The image vibrates, then stabilizes again.

 

“As of today, we believe that we’ve discovered the exact location of The Breach.”

 

* * *

 

Captain Kurosaki stops him outside of the lab, looking somber, the three stars on his breast chiming as he turns up into post. Grimmjow immediately grinds to a halt, straightens, mirrors. “Sir,” he acknowledges, looking ahead, past his superordinate’s shoulder span.

 

Isshin hums, allowing him the courtesy of his salute before ordering a cease. “At ease, soldier. Walk with me, will you?”

 

They proceed through the dwindling of the Academy building’s higher floors, overlooking Alaska’s sober grounds through moderate windows. Gravelly mountains stretch wide around them, powdered snow staining their peaks. Grimmjow says nothing, avoiding glancing across to his superior officer, who’s usually moronically chatty to a fault, not this – idealistic picture of a decorated soldier.  _It’s almost like he knows how to be a goddamned adult, all of a sudden_ , Grimmjow thinks, and ain’t that a little creepy.

 

Isshin walks with his fingers folded into each other at the low of his back; his back which is too straight, his shoulders too knotted, his face too impasse. They cross the hall that goes immediately from Research, and into Administration. Go through Admin and down the elevator, and you’ll come underground for drift tests and the lesser docks the Academy presents. This ain’t Texas, or a Shatterdome, after all, there’s no room for hosting an entire Jäger here. They do Pons, training runs, and rounding the soft beak of the mountain, the old PPDC Proving Grounds lay desolate and waiting. But no more.

 

Isshin stops before the elevators. He presses the button opting for the lower levels. It lights up softly blue with a metallic chime.

 

Grimmjow frowns. “Sir,” he says, “Can I ask what this’s all about?”

 

The elevators _pling_ , smoothly slotting into a halt on their floor, before his captain has managed to reply. The doors slide open. Isshin straightens into post. “Captain Commander Yamamoto,” he says, looking straight ahead.

 

Grimmjow almost sputters, really not prepared to face royalty on an off day like this, and hastily mirrors his captain’s stance. The _fuck_.

 

The Captain Commander nods, amicable as can be, surrounded by that special air of authority just radiating from one’s posture. “Captain Kurosaki, officer Jaegerjaques,” he says. “At ease, gentlemen. Please step on, lest the doors close before you.”

 

Grimmjow steps onto the elevator with the feeling perpetrating the air that this is just too fucking odd – _Groundhog Day_ brand of odd.

 

He’s met the Captain Commander exactly twice before. Once as a recruit fresh out of the PPDC, roughly trained for Category 1’s and 2’s out on an island off the coast of Manila. Green and angry, spitfire young, ready to have a go at anything after having spent three months in the wilderness of a heady jungle and a traitorous ocean along a group of other ragtag misfits, head cases hand picked from ground zeroes all over the hemisphere to do God’s damned work. Suicide Squad 1.

 

The other time, had been when he’d gone into retirement from piloting. A small ceremony in the Captain Commander’s own office; received an accolade whilst leaning on a crutch, shoulder taped and aching and thoroughly sick to his stomach.

 

The Captain Commander’s personal guard presses the button for minus three levels. The doors slide shut behind him and Isshin, humming with the machinery.

 

“As unofficial as this may appear, given that this hardly has neither the sound nor the look of an official summoning,” the Captain Commander says, “It is a very serious proposition I wish to offer you, Officer Jaegerjaques.” He looks straight at Grimmjow. He’s painfully neutral, nothing betraying in his weather worn and wired face.

 

Grimmjow refrains from frowning, given that it probably wouldn’t look good on his resume in the long run. “Sir?” he inquires.

 

He’s still rigid, unable to shake his erect posture and drawn aback shoulders. There is a million things running through his mind, but none of them manage to explain what happens next, and Grimmjow wouldn’t even try to justify the drop of his own jaw when it comes, punching his stomach thoroughly out low.

 

“On behalf of several of the current board members – myself, in the capacity of holding the rank of Captain Commander of the PPDC, as well a resounding majority of the currently active senior officers in this division, we would formally like to ask you to consider re-entering into active duty as a Ranger,” says the Captain Commander, lightning on an otherwise clear sky, and levels Grimmjow with an even stare.

 

Yeah, say fucking what.

 

* * *

 

His final outing is in Lima.

 

They’re woken by the pitch of the alarm at midnight. Young and buzzing with the opportunity to save a continent – a world, he doesn’t think much. He operates on a level of hindbrain instinct that begets thought. Grimmjow is halfway into gear, running a hand through his hair, a nervous tick, maybe in excitement, before he thinks of the fact that his partner isn’t even moving.

 

He frowns, and kicks Nelliel’s bed frame. It rattles worryingly, somewhat corroded from the slick humidity pervading the South American Shatterdome. “Oi, you gonna sleep through a Category 3, Nel?” he says. He forces the drysuit t-shirt over his head. “‘S fine, the Captain Commander’s piloted a Mark I on his own. As if I couldn’t do it.”

 

“Christ, do you always have to cause such a ruckus?” Nel mutters after a beat of magnified silence. She rolls over to face him, peering at Grimmjow through glossy eyes and chapped lips. The alarm has quieted, and only the red flare of it remains, reflecting on her face. “What time is it?”

 

“Zero one hundred. This ain’t nothing, come on.”

 

She eventually climbers over the frame of her top bunker. She’s half disoriented, one hand steadying on the steel bar, one pinning the wild mess of her hair up into a whirl on top of her skull. She hits the floor with a soft _thunk_ , naked feet pale in the shine of their monitor bleeping out an infra map out of the Miracle Mile at them.

 

In his dreams, he notices the off beat around her; the distant way in which she dresses. The irritation with strands coming loose to tangle in her eyelashes. The belt looped around her waist clumsily, rather than smoothly. Nelliel Tu Oderschvank has always been the epitome of grace. Grimmjow hasn’t seen anyone approach a sparring session, a battle, or even a mundane, daily task with the effortless, silent curve to their movements such as she. She doesn’t clamber, doesn’t stutter. Something is off, and he doesn’t notice that until it’s far, far too late. Into a Stage 3. All but in his dreams, where he is watching himself, a ghost in his own, ignorant machine. He’s helpless before the confident swagger to his hips, the brash square of his shoulders. It could spit him in the face and the Grimmjow of this time couldn’t give less of a shit.

 

He high-fives his way through Command Bridge. Buzzes through set-up. Nelliel says nothing. Not when the suit’s spine, clipping in mid-air, suctioning itself stuck to the slither of her back, is fastened. Neither when the shoulder pads, branded with their insignia, are locked in place. Not as the helmet is slipped over her head.

 

“Are you all with me,  _Jade Lance_?” crackles the static of Nemu’s voice over their comm. “This is the first Category 3 we have encountered, so you will not be going out there to meet it alone.”

 

“Ready as ever,” Grimmjow replies, tuning the frequency in his mic-up slightly. The static snaps, and fades. “Just get us out there, will you?”

 

“Patience, Ranger. Your orders are a standard two-man formation. You are to be running point before  _Latigo_. Commander Sui-Fēng will be along shortly to be your guide. I’m initiating the Neural Handshake in fifty nine – “

 

Grimmjow glances over at Nelliel, who is unmoving, distant. Then, he took it for something she’d do pre-battle. He shrugs. “’Least Cifer will be running defense for us, not the other way around. Fucker deserves it,” he says, content in the knowledge that Ulquiorra fucking loathes being another’s – and especially Grimmjow’s – point guard. He adjusts his helmet once more. He looks around, flexes his fingers in the gloves. A thrill of adrenaline trills down his spine.

 

“You ready?” He asks Nel. This Grimmjow doesn’t turn to look at her, he simply asks the straight of the point before him.

 

Nel doesn’t respond, or can’t – he doesn’t know which one. After all this time, he still has no idea what went through her head at that time. What happened to her.

 

He sees himself shrugging it off, kick a foot out in a fit of adrenaline, and adjusting a few of the levers regulating the Mark-2’s radiation shields. His pulse reads slightly below average. Good. He’s ready. As ready as he ever will be for a Category 3 (lies. All lies.).

 

They’re sucked into the warp of the Handshake as Nemu’s countdown ceases. They enter the dimension of co-exist that is accessing someone else’s mind, the unique experience of being completely at the mercy of someone else – and being on top of someone else, mentally. This part is hazy, when he remembers it. Blurred out in sepias and memory static. He might see something flash past him, unlike Nel, the scurry of something distantly remembered, buried, in her mind.

 

He doesn’t really know whether he wants for there to be something there, or if it truly was something that he could see.

 

He only knows, that everything post their drop, is the world in red, and black, and fading in sharp tangs of blood and a rush of Lima’s hot, humid air.

 

* * *

 

He wakes up two weeks later, post-op, the pieces of bone in his shoulder rearranged meticulously, a shell of fragile casing around the damaged joint. A deep, ugly gash is tautly sewn across the entirety of his chest. He doesn’t care. Feels, innately, intimately, pain, pain, and then – a blank, frightful drop straight down in his mind. As though someone has physically cut something out from there, and left a hollow gouge in its wake. He knows that Nel doesn’t die, but he doesn’t know much else. She’s black, black, and still deeply entrenched in his head – dark, no vital signs, no fear, not a _fucking thing_.

 

He rips the electrodes off of his chest, and the IV-drip from the crook of his arm. He ignores how it punches the air out of him, out of a damaged pair of ribs sawing into his lungs tightly. He stumbles out of his bed and out of the room, quick on his feet in a surge of strength he can’t humanly possess and before a nurse will come running to the beep of the frantic alarm sounding from where he’s disconnected himself from his heart monitor.

 

There are only a handful of rooms in Intense Care that have been warded off specifically for Rangers and PPDC corps in Lima’s hospital, so he doesn’t have to look for long.

 

Nelliel’s door is warded with a guard post, two erect, silent guards who turn with the sound of commotion from the far end where Grimmjow turns a stumbling, unseeing corner. They spot him when he’s halfway far enough to barrel through them, and startle forward in alarm. He’s unprepared for it, heart beating jackrabbit quickly against his ribs, about to burst through his body, but they must see it – his knees suddenly giving out, just before the door. One of the guards stoop low to catch the blunt of his weight, and prevent him from hitting the floor. He stops breathing for a second, dizzy with where his heart rushes, all the blood in his body dropping low and leaving only pale regret. He reaches for air that doesn’t help him breathe.

 

“ _Nel_ ,” he pants, _keens_ – in panic, hoarsely, voice unused since long.

 

“Ranger,” one of the guards say, nervous beneath trained calm, “Calm yourself,” and repeats herself, “ _Ranger_. Please. We need you to calm _down_ , you haven’t been conscious for weeks. Do not extort your strength. Your stitches may give.”

 

“She’s in there,” he protests, and struggles against the hold around his waist and up into his side, feebly. The guard nods, steadies him over her thinner shoulder, but doesn’t allow for him to move forward, towards the door, towards where he knows that Nel is. Sympathy reeks in her words, cloying on her features.

 

“I know,” she says, “But she’s not going to hear you. There is nothing you can do for her that is not resting, Officer.”

 

* * *

 

“Abarai, Kurosaki. This is supposed to be a friendly spar, alright? I want to see controlled approaches, not brute force.”

 

Grimmjow recognizes Abarai; looming shoulders, thick red hair and wires of black ink covering him from neck to wrists to waist.

 

He doesn’t recognize the other kid, save for his name, apparently (he does do a double take, but Ōmaeda had said Kurosaki, alright). He’s gaunt and gangly; thin legs, wiry arms. Orange hair. Grimmjow raises an eyebrow from where he’s parked himself at the back of the crowd of curious onlookers just at the inside of the Anchorage Shatterdome’s Combat Room. _That can’t be Captain Kurosaki’s kid,_ he thinks, _those ain’t even dormant genes_.

 

The crowd goes respectfully silent as the two begin to circle each other; size one another up. Grimmjow knows Abarai’s fighting style; direct and harshly punishing for eventual missteps. He’s got a good eye, but he’s too brash and too cocky to be any sort of leading example. His stance is practiced as can be, though – slightly ducked away, curved back, shinai held at half mast. It’s standard positioning, and it’s well taught, well mastered. You’re able to both attack and block quickly, your range wide and little limited.

 

Meanwhile, Grimmjow notices, along with the other stray whispers starting among the crowd – Kurosaki’s sword hand is drooping into the mat. His shoulders are low, and his hips are set wide. He’s looking like a boxer who’s either too green or too stupid to know that your guard’s a real essential to both your offense and your defense. That it’s not just for show that you’re shielding your jaw tightly.

 

He’ll find out soon enough, though. Abarai stops, dekes, and in rapid succession lashes out across the mat. Grimmjow sees this ending in three strikes, and wonders if Kurosaki’s here per some favor dad called in with the council.  _Tche_ , he thinks, and crosses ankles and arms, sinking into the wall with barely concealed conceit. Truth is, he didn’t come in here expecting anything. That Abarai is here is out of sheer boredom on the Ranger’s part; this kid’ll be glad to have someone grind him into the mat to teach him some well received lessons. Besides, he neither knows nor cares about this kid.

 

Grimmjow’s about to push off the wall again. It’s cold and dry against his bad shoulder, which is, even now, years later, more sensitive to drops and surges in temperature and in humidity than it has any right to be. Everything says it’s supposed to be over, anyway. He’s wasting time on this that he could be turning into something remotely useful in the gym.

 

He turns to leave –

 

And Kurosaki moves out of the way like a snake’s rubber body weaves through water, graceful and agile, to throw Abarai’s aim completely off.

 

He steps quickly out of the way for when Abarai lashes out again, sidesteps once more, puts weight on his front foot, and shoves up against the Ranger, maneuvering his shinai up and beneath his opponent’s armpit. It’s 1 - 0 before someone knows what hit them.

 

Kurosaki snags Abarai’s arm with his free hand, pulls downwards as he pokes the shinai up through the empty space that builds there, and slides down to kick his feet from beneath him.

 

Grimmjow resumes his position at the wall, straightening from his previous slouch. The change in the air is imminent, both in how everyone snaps to attention, and in how the crowd magnetically leans slightly into the fight with renewed interest.

 

They go at it again; Kurosaki leans back from Abarai, dekes, and comes at him from an odd, half crescent angle. He fights standing and laying down in some odd mix of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, bastardized Judo, and strikes with classic boxing jabs, a mess of techniques which Abarai seems to have no idea what to make of.

 

And suddenly, just like that, Grimmjow’s realized what’ll happen; doesn’t need to see Kurosaki win four more to know that there’s a low curling pleasure branded stuck and iron in his gut, watching the kid slither about the mat and pounce at his sparring partner, who is knocked beneath the hollow wood of the shinai again.

 

* * *

 

He sees Isshin’s kid a few hours later, sit by Abarai and Kuchiki, Hirako and a couple of other active Rangers at dinner. He’s gesticulating as though immersed in lively discussion, but speaks low enough so that Grimmjow doesn’t hear him from the relative distance of his own far table.

 

“Rumors are going around. Captain Kurosaki’s offspring is a tough one,” remarks Luppi, nimbly shuffling rice around his bowl. “He doesn’t look it, but he went 5 - 1 against Abarai Renji today. Or so I’ve heard.”

 

Grimmjow shrugs. “Still just a kid,” he says. “Besides, plenty of reason for why no Kurosaki’s supposed to be steppin’ a single foot inside a Jäger.”

 

Nobody is much inclined to say anything to that, knowing when there is measure to overstep on, and when it’s best not to.

 

Grimmjow keeps regarding Kurosaki from afar, seemingly untroubled, quieting occasionally to make room for Abarai’s loud mouth, Kuchiki’s reprimands. Hirako’s lazy humor. There doesn’t seem to be anything particularly screwed with him, but Grimmjow knows intimately not to judge a book by its impasse cover. They’ve got RABIT’s to chase in plenty, the lot of them, rounded up like fucked up sheep on the outmost of the rim of the end of the world. Being a Ranger is less about not having been marked, and more about being the one among a few dozen who can cake the most foundation over the ugly scars and smile the prettiest when the day’s nearing twilight.

 

He’s not sure where he fits in on that particular scale, not sure he’ll be able to find out.

 

Kurosaki leaves among the first at his table, sans company. Grimmjow can’t say he isn’t a teensy bit curious.

 

* * *

 

He sees Kurosaki spar twice more, and calls in a favor with Admin to pull his file.

 

He’s jaw dropping; not perfect, alright. His tactical scores during combat immersion have improved only during this last semester, and his psych score is closer to an adequate train wreck in motion than it is to adequate, but really, really somethin’ else. 78 drops over six semesters; 77 kills.

 

It’s the most time anyone’s spent in simulation by a mile, Grimmjow thinks, and the score’s near goddamn perfect, tears in your eyes, the whole shebang.

 

Grimmjow had 56/58. His psych eval has been stamped classified, now. His file is redlined. During nights particularly thick with trembling trepidation and overwhelming heat, his shoulder aches, and his nightmares make his stomach drop out until there is nothing left in his chest, his lungs, his gut. He wakes screaming, at times. He knows that in a real simulation test, the RABIT’ll be fast, and it’ll be merciless.

 

The hunt. Tantalizing.

 

But nevertheless. He watches Kurosaki, sweat slicked hair, tight jaw and thin lips, match Hirako Shinji, bona fide genius, in speed and cheeky maneuvers. He loses only 2 - 3 to a guy Grimmjow matches evenly with, and who probably edges him on a bad day.

 

Jesus Fucking Christ, he’s in this bad already.

 

* * *

 

They end up sparring, really, purely by accident.

 

Grimmjow is wound tight on the day, muscles hard and tense, thoughts running circles around him. Unohana had called him during an assault twenty seven miles north of Anchorage, and he knows it had to have been important. That it’s got to do with Nel. He’s attempted to call back twice per satellite, but of course, now he can’t get a hold of her. The doctor’s busy, he gets it. It doesn’t still the pins and needles his thoughts balance on now, a scale tipping sideways with worry. So he wanders aimlessly the corridors, attempts to keep his head out of the morbid gutter it’s perennially waiting to get stuck in.

 

Abarai and Kuchiki knock a Category 3 out of the water. The clock is reset. All of them collectively pull on a breath of relief they’ve also collectively been holding, whilst the rain continually pours down outside.

 

It’s been two months.

 

Grimmjow twists his neck to lose a crick, and unzips his jacket. He stretches both legs’ calves. The dial on the far wall shows an hour post afternoon. Lined up before him are the five candidates who have been picked from the herd for him.

 

He’s tense, and knows that it’s lucky he won’t be entering a pod with anyone today. Rain pours, evening come. He’s sweating, and still cold. The candidates – they’re still green, some of them barely dropped off at base for evals before they’d been whisked off to the Combat Room. Probably. He hazards two, who’re looking a little too edgy, like they’ll collapse on the verge of the mat, having exhausted themselves already from the sheer alien excitement of the situation.

 

The remaining three are dead to the world. Glazed eyes, drooping shoulders. One pops his neck in a mirror of Grimmjow earlier. One has stripes of thick scarring all over his throat and slip of visible torso. He stares way past Grimmjow.

 

“Begin!” Sounds Sui-Fēng’s voice, clear as the chime of a bell.

 

Grimmjow dispatches of the first three in less than a minute per match.

 

He knows that he’s going hard down, that sparring isn’t supposed to be about amassing wounds and points, but rather to see, on equally a physical and mental level, how well you match each other’s skill set and technical thinking in close range combat. He throws one of the greener ones down on the mat, pinning back a shoulder until the kid emits a weak groan, strangled in pain in his throat. Grimmjow lets him go, and rises again. He turns to the crowd, which claps its applause hesitantly.

 

Grimmjow raises an eyebrow at the next one, who’s about to step onto the mat.

 

Then he sees, at the far back of the audience, a flash of color too bold to be ordinary. And he knows that not every blunt idea that comes to him like a flash is good, but – Grimmjow signals for the candidate who’s approaching to halt, say no more.

 

“Sorry,” he says, and waves a hand dismissively, “I ain’t fighting you. I’ve seen enough already.”

 

He knows Sui-Fēng’s going to be pissed. He can hear her breathing changing from quiet, calculating, to slightly louder, more rapturous in motion. It’s an indicator enough for those of them who’ve been working with her for a while.

 

Grimmjow searches the crowd. Kurosaki is more visible now, the crowd shuffling around him in obvious confusion, watching him Grimmjow for a hint at what’s going to happen next.

 

“Oi,” Grimmjow says loudly, “You – orange, undrafted. Kurosaki. I want you to get up here.”

 

There’s a minute of silence. Stunned as though forked by a stroke of lightning. Then Kurosaki peeks out from behind the crowd of, to Grimmjow, indistinguishable faces – the people who are _not_ Kurosaki. He frowns.

 

“I’m not among the selected, don’t disrespect those who are,” he says.

 

 _Did he really_ , is Grimmjow’s first thought. But yeah, of course, some of them’s gotta be chivalrous too. He snorts, ‘cause he sure isn’t one of those people. They’re at war, come on.

 

“Yeah, like we have time to care about showing candidates disrespect,” he snorts. “This is about combat compatibility, so don’t give me that. If I’m bulldozing someone’s delicate little feelings by not throwing ‘em around the ring for show, then that’s that. I want you to step up here, ‘cause I want you to give me a fight. No one else in here seems to be able to do that. So step up.”

 

Kurosaki’s face hardens. He looks like he’s about to refuse, like he’s about to be mulish and stubborn for the sake of upholding some flimsy set of personal principles. Grimmjow’s heart races, adrenaline thick pulse picking away at the inside of his ribs.

 

“Kurosaki,” Sui-Fēng’s voice snaps, drone as though she’s reading him from a list. “Go. I’m not a fan of your insubordinance, Jaegerjaques,” she turns towards Grimmjow, “But I’m going to let this one slide, since I know that you are, despite notions, not a completely worthless judge of character.” 

 

Huh. _That’s new_ , he thinks, but inclines his head towards her. Her sneer is cold. “I sincerely hope this won’t turn out to be a waste of time.”

 

Grimmjow turns to Kurosaki. Kurosaki hesitates for a brief second. He then bows his head in acknowledge. “Ma’am,” he says.

 

The kid weaves easily through the crowd when he begins to move, unzipping his PPDC parka as he goes. He’s wiry and thin, protruding collar bones, a gaunt jaw. When he moves, however – he moves predatory, hips fluid, feet quiet. He picks the discarded shinai up nimbly, and rests it in the flat his palm, him clearly used to balancing the weight of it.

 

Grimmjow thinks about testing this kid, pushing his buttons, strain his limits. 78 drops, 77 kills. Orange, borderline reddish psych score. He’s a Kurosaki.

 

He lashes out towards Grimmjow before they’re even sounded a go. Before the crowd has gathered what’s happening.

 

It’s fucking _glorious_.

 

They match, 3 - 3; Kurosaki pokes up a slash in his eyebrow, Grimmjow tugs him down half bent and chewing up his lip when his elbow nearly pops, bent angling awkwardly out from his own body. Kurosaki ducks, rolls, slips from beneath his arm lock like something amphibian which slithers, twists, and launches himself forward from the pads of his feet, coming at Grimmjow head to head without so much as pulling on a secondary long breath.

 

They match in strength, in speed, in awkward fighting stances and randomized blunt force attacks. Blood dribbles into Grimmjow’s eyelashes, clumping them, and he breathes harshly into the air just before Kurosaki. Kurosaki, who has hair plastered all over his forehead, and bruises blooming over his left upper arm like a tightly wound rosary. Who’s got his blunt nails dug deep in the low of Grimmjow’s back, where he’s holding on and pressing him away from himself, knees locked around Grimmjow’s left thigh, stretching himself backwards until Grimmjow feels how his left hip is damn near close to disjointing from the remainder of himself.

 

He doesn’t need to know more than this. It simultaneously scares the living shit out of him, and fills him up to burst with a heady, reckless type of wild excitement that he hasn’t felt since – ever.

 

Kurosaki leaves, after the match has been stopped mid-assault, saying nothing and betraying nothing. There is something wild in his eyes, something hooded which nobody on the scene neither comments, nor, perhaps, notices.

 

Grimmjow remains with Sui-Fēng and Ōmaeda after the room has cleared of spectators and hopefuls, going over their detailed result board.

 

Ōmaeda’s parked leaning against a far wall, sucking at a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, looking as impressed as can be. “Shit, Jaegerjaques,” he comments, “That kid’s equipped enough to be beating your tough ass within a fortnight and some dirty fighting.”

 

Grimmjow thinks of the comment – and the sparring sequences, throughout the entire night, when he can’t sleep, and it sends fucking shivers tripping down his spine.

 

* * *

 

He’s the new kid on the block when he hears about why it is that Captain Kurosaki is so decorated, yet hasn’t piloted a Jäger more than once in his life. He’s one of the very best; perfect scores, an honorable soldier, a true leader per example; but he doesn’t do more than strategy and mission guiding.

 

Kurosaki Masaki dies, crushed, beneath a severed Kaiju’s limb. One of the first to ever make it to land. She dies shielding her baby twins, two and four, and her eldest son, eight. Their father is far too late on scene, that particular day on duty for the area military, attempting to keep the coast northwest of Sapporo at bay from the, then, unknown threat from out to sea.

 

Grimmjow’s heard of it; he’s never seen it, never imagined the scenario before him in more than brief flashes of morbid unthinking.

 

He dresses like someone only taught, someone hardwired to do a certain set of movements by rote, rather than someone used to doing it each and every day. Muscle memory firmly intact, whilst he doesn’t really understand what he’s doing.

 

He’s left Unohana three voice mails in the last 24 hours. No response, so far. He pulls his t-shirt taught over his shoulders, zips his pants up, pulls his boots on, mechanically. There is something in the air that smells oddly like the cloying remnants of old reminiscence.

 

He doesn’t high five his way to the docks. He walks like a man parched for water, jerking and unsure through the halls. Ignores greetings, has to ignore his own emotions. Quash them.

 

Kurosaki turns a corner just as Grimmjow is about to, and suddenly, he has to face the reality of the situation. The kid looks somber, frowning lightly, looking like it’s about to rain. That kind of expression, however the hell that looks. It just does, on Kurosaki’s sharp bones and mouth.

 

“So,” Grimmjow mutters, and jerks his head in the general direction of the docks. “You really gonna agree to do this?”

 

Kurosaki shrugs. “It’s war. I have to, don’t I?”

 

Grimmjow snorts. “Yeah, well, don’t pull your voluntary hero cape on just yet. We’re just doing the calibration. See if we match on a scale of one to fucked up in the head, too.”

 

He might’ve seen a slight of a smile on Kurosaki’s face, but he can’t be sure. The kid half shrugs, as though he’s got no real comment to that, and resumes walking. Grimmjow walks just slightly behind him, monitoring his step, the way he carries his shoulders; it’s all important.

 

Stepping out on the hanging bridge connecting to Dock 7 is – something that will always tug on him, an odd feeling of resentment and pride mixed curling in his chest. The Mark 3, powered down in its station, is the best they’ve got, the very cream of the crop; top of her class. Nuclear Vortex turbine with a titanium fusion, 08FS vents, 98BD torques; she’s got it all, and Grimmjow knows he hasn’t ever piloted such a gorgeous machine, probably won’t ever get to do it again after this run. She’s red, and blue, striped black and yellow. Flecks of stainless steel beneath the chemically streaked paint. The core glints dull in the light and the jostle of the Anchorage Shatterdome.

 

“That’s a piece of art if I’ve ever seen one,” he murmurs as they approach the Conn-Pod.

 

“Van Gogh isn’t your thing?” snarks Kurosaki.

 

Grimmjow snorts laugh. “Nah, ain’t got much over for sunflowers and ears. Oil and 2000 tons of carbon fibre and steel is, on the other hand, something I can live with. Used to pilot a Mark 2, but this is something entirely different. She’s on a whole other level, this one.”

 

“ _Jade Lance_ , right?” asks Kurosaki, half turning back towards him.

 

Grimmjow raises an eyebrow. “Know your stuff, do you?”

 

Kurosaki’s stopped, stretching his neck until it pops in either direction, and returns Grimmjow’s expression. “I haven’t majored in kittens and daisies at the academy,” he says blandly, “We study actual battle sequences to prepare for what’s to come. I know about your outings.”

 

Grimmjow is about to reply snappish, defensively; that you, kid, don’t know jack shit, if you did, you wouldn’t have agreed to this, no matter what weapon was held at point blank range to your temple. But he doesn’t get that far before he notices that there’s a two-man formation moving towards them from behind. Not obviously, but obviously enough.

 

Grimmjow twists instinctively, relaxes an ounce first when he only sees Ishida, Ishida Ryūken’s brat, and the freakishly huge mechanic who’s named Yasutora, approach them. The way too large for life large dude has looming shoulders, on which the knows are the size of Grimmjow’s head, twice over, and he could probably snap his legs like twigs, but he’s apparently just that fucking nice. Grimmjow doesn’t get it.

 

“Officer Jaegerjaques. Kurosaki,” greets Ishida at his side coolly.

 

At first, Kurosaki looks like he’s about to scrunch face and sulk, eyebrow ticking high on his forehead. But then, the strangest thing that ever happened, happens: the kid breaks into a genuine smile, like he’s actually _happy_ to see Ishida there. “Ishida, you bastard, it’s been long,” he exclaims through a lopsided smile and two perfunctory rows of bleach white teeth. Grimmjow sure ain’t staring.

 

Ishida sighs, clearly irked. He pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose again. “It’s barely been two months,” he half heartedly snaps. “And, anyhow, I’m not here to exchange pleasantries. I’m here to walk you through your Jäger, and to go through your security protocol. It slightly differs in the Mark-3. Though I’d have never seriously considered that this event actually occur to me in real life, so forgive me if I’m slightly shell shocked.”

 

“Aw,” Kurosaki coos, “I’m touched you seemto care.”

 

Ishida glares from behind his frames. “Please try to listen, Kurosaki,” he says haughtily, “I know you prefer charging in headfirst, but here, that could actually get you killed.”

 

Kurosaki waves a flippant hand. “Yeah, yeah,” he says. “Let's get on with it, then.”

 

Grimmjow is too weirded out by the exchange to say anything at all, temporarily disconnected from any disjointed emotions he might’ve experienced prior to it. Ishida motions for them to continue forward, towards the gape of the hole in the back of the machinery. Grimmjow follows mainly by rote.

 

Stepping into the Conn-Pod is – a sickness rooted deep in his throat, and excitement rising like bile. He hears Ishida distantly – “The control panels on each side have been largely redone and updated from the Mark 1 and 2 models, now covering vent controls – a feature only the 3 has. It amasses data on everything; outside, to inside. Radio chemical readings, health checks, you have UV sight, linked directly to your helmets...”

 

And it sounds fucking great, the greatest machine that man has made. She’s even beautiful, inside as well; chromed, a dull yellow shine emitting from the darkening panel pulled before her bulletproof, glassed visage. What’s otherwise a panoramic view of death and shatter from the high deck of destruction. Grimmjow’s breath stocks in his throat.

 

“Jaegerjaques?” Ishida says. He’s pulled out of his musings harshly.

 

“Yeah, I‘m here. Just – admirin’ the view.”

 

Kurosaki looks like he wants to say something, but doesn’t, concentrating on how Chad is fastening the mechanical parts over the Circuitry Suit. A suit, pieces of it, that are brandless, shoulder pads clean. The long slither of detachable spine chewing the air fresh out of its original package. Grimmjow holds his arms out at beckon, to slip the vest on. Ishida works efficiently, with the soft hands of a surgeon – neurosurgeon, at fucking that. He feels like he should be wary of that part, but also knows that since Ishida’s staff, working with the Rangers, he’ll know Grimmjow’s file already. So much for privacy.

 

It’s over before it’s begun. They’re slipped mics and helmets, also non-significant – there’s not even the sharp mark of a nail that’s torn a graze on its surface. There’s nothing.

 

They’re nothing. Alone. Ishida and Chad have backed out and back onto the dock. 

 

“Alright, gentlemen,” crackles the static of the mic so loudly in Grimmjow’s ear that he grimaces with surprise. “You all ready for this now, no shaking, sweating? It’s okay to feel nervous, you’ll be baring your very _souls and minds_ , connecting completely – “

 

“ _Captain Kurosaki, if you please,_ ” comes cutting in from the background of the feed, exasperated. Grimmjow reaches, over Isshin’s too loud voice, per automat, towards his control panel, and adjusts the sound levels. He glances over at Kurosaki, who is frowning again, but seems unfazed at having his father acting – like himself, in his close ear.

 

“All good,” Kurosaki replies, and adjusts his helmet. Grimmjow reaches out towards his panel again, feeling so much dejá vu pushing levers and buttons around that it’s incredible he hasn’t already began chasing the RABIT, even outside of the Pilot to Pilot Linking. Jesus, he’s a fucking mess.

 

“Okay then,” Isshin says, at once somber again. “Uryuu will be here shortly, to initiate the Neural Handshake. Remember, this is just a calibration sequence. Take it easy and you’ll pull through, let me be a proud daddy.”

 

“I’ll pass,” Grimmjow mutters. They don’t have to be connected for him to know that Kurosaki’s slanting half a tense smile, saying, don’t I know it.

 

“Kurosaki, Jaegerjaques,” sounds Ishida over the mic momentarily after. “Initiating the Neural Handshake in fifteen, fourteen – “

 

Grimmjow realizes before it happens, that it will happen – it’ll go completely fucking sideways.

 

* * *

 

There’s blood, intestines, trails of guts cooking beneath the sun merciless. Lima’s shores are littered with debris of buildings, sand splattering out and across the boardwalk, along with torn cars, a mess of cable trails and phone lines. And people.

 

There’s a Kaiju, torn apart, coming in from the sea, the waves lapping at where it bleeds a thick blue, poisoning, polluting. Farther up are two of its limbs, severed. There are myriads of shapes, distorted, beneath them; people, fish, vehicles. Kaiju attacks are often characterized, or will be, in the future, by the sky slicing up into a storm. It rains for days, when the harvesting teams from the Black Market, and the PPDC teams which allow them access, find their way onto the site to clean up. But on this day, the heat is abnormal.

 

Grimmjow sees, through haze, slowly walking ashore in the torn remains of Jade Lance, Nel unconscious against his left leg and dead left arm, vague movement ashore. Something circling an arm that’s still convulsing with fluid coming out of its uncauterized wound, shaking the nearby ground, even in its unattached state.

 

People are coming out, he realizes, through pain, but keeps his eyes as steady as can be on the activity around the arm. “Gotta be strong, Nel, what’d I tell you,” he mutters, slipping in and out of consciousness the further he walks. His legs are straining, like the muscle’s peeling off, with every step that he has to pilot by himself.

 

It goes, until it doesn’t. He kneels down, still strapped in, to move Nel around to his relatively unwounded side, lay a shaking arm around her shoulders. “Gonna be fine,” he says, and allows their Jaeger to topple over, finally, mercifully, sink into the water.

 

The scene cuts in a flash of blue.

 

Kurosaki Masaki lays dying in front of her three children. It pours, and the oldest child, Ichigo, stands paralyzed with his two sisters hidden behind his back. Still thin, too thin, for the other two children to be completely shielded. He isn’t crying, or if he is, he’s quiet. It mixes with the rain, with a hairline cut that’s bleeding and blending and bleeding, despite the rain. He just stands.

 

There is not a thing anyone can do, and there is no one around. Distantly, there are helicopters. There is screaming, shattering, inhuman, but it’s far away, too far away.

 

Distantly, there is shouting, names. Sapporo is wasted, half the city laid to waste. When the PPDC and the UN have managed to round up the collective damage and survivors, they’ll allow them shelter in the half ruined Olympic Arena, in the belly of the city. Isshin will find his children there, only after he’s confirmed his wife’s death on scene. He’s flown in from Ishikari, the immediate sea there polluted.

 

The oldest child is seated in the midst of the arena, arms forming a protective crescent around his baby sisters. He doesn’t see his father come until he’s crushed against a breast chiming with honorary medals, smelling of the ocean and of blood. He knows that his father says something, but over the rush of blood in his ears, he cannot hear it. He never has been able to recall what it was.

 

Static crackles. _Jesus fuck._

 

* * *

 

Grimmjow pulls out first, harshly, unable to breathe beneath the helmet. His heart is a jackrabbit, and fuck it all to hell, Kurosaki’s sunk to his knees, staring hollowly into the air. The system’s beeping at them in panic, and now, now, he hears Ishida’s loud voice in his ear. He clears his throat, parched like a near dead man’s.

 

“We’re fine,” he mutters, and disconnects from the floor panels. “Fine, nothin’ that hasn’t happened before.”

 

“Get out of there  _now_ ,” Ishida says, harsh and pointed, and kills the connection.

 

Grimmjow drops his helmet, unable to not allow it to slip between his fingers. Standing for a second, there’s not enough space in his lungs to immure the air he’s attempting to force through, but he knows that there’s a defense mechanism slotting into place when shit happens, so he staggers over to Kurosaki, who hasn’t moved an inch, unseeing. The system’s switched off, forcibly, so Grimmjow knows he’s out of his own head, but that doesn’t mean you’re lucid.

 

“Hey, kid,” he says, dropping to his knees next to Kurosaki. “Easy now, lemme get your helmet off. Get you out of here. Come on, easy now,’s right -- “ He talks nonsense, a jumble of words, as he reaches out towards Kurosaki, careful not to raise alarms by hastily reaching for the throat and face, but slowly, slowly.

 

His fingerpads are slippery beneath the gloves, shaking. Always treat an unstable, retreated Ranger like a frightened animal; the freight train of emotions that comes with chasing the rabbit is a storm unable to be controlled, you’re approaching someone who’s got a body connected to violent memories, reacting accordingly to the flow of time not in your dimension. Grimmjow knows there’ve been near deaths, when someone’s gotten in too deep to stumble their way out again.

 

The Conn-Pod breathes with fresh air when its back is manually opened, and a stream of people flood in. Technicians to pull off the suits, a small med team, Ishida, Isshin -- fuck. But Grimmjow’s already got Kurosaki steadied on his shoulder, and damn it all to hell, himself, for agreeing to this, and Kurosaki, for not staying out of his own head. He knows that’s the most fucking hypocritical thing to say since the inception of the world, but Grimmjow knows himself, susceptible to outside influence. He knows that if he’s got a session, it’ll break in less than a minute. It’s the aftermath, rather than the event itself. He flashed through Kurosaki’s full memories; he knows what happened, sick to his stomach.

 

“Are you okay, Ranger?” Isshin asks, at the entrance to the Jaeger. He looks pensive -- set in stone, but not necessarily disappointed and angry. Like he’s assessing this little experiment. He did put it in motion. Grimmjow wants to sneer, but half shrugs with the shoulder that he hasn’t got Kurosaki on.

 

“Fine, Captain. I told ya. Hit a speed bump, is all.”

 

Isshin doesn’t look half convinced. Grimmjow knows he isn’t half convinced himself, fingers shaking, stomach dropping out.

 

* * *

 

He’s not fine, but his psych eval goes okay, it’s not like he’s got any other neurons fried, and he’s unharmed physically. Grimmjow stretches on the sterilized hospital bunk, carefully getting back onto his feet. Kotetsu, Unohana’s assistant Chief of Medical, frowns as she gathers up a small plastic container and stickers a tab with his name neatly scripted to it.

 

“For eventual nightmares and bouts of insomnia. We need you out there sharp, Ranger,” she says, leveling him with a look. Grimmjow snorts.

 

“Yeah, we’ll see ‘bout that. See ya, doc, thanks for the pills.”

 

He thinks about wandering about. Thinks about kicking something over. There are many things he thinks about doing, but he finds himself drawn to Kurosaki’s room, located in the heart of Anchorage’s station. 106. There are few milling in the corridors, so when he kicks on the door, no one’s around to see it. Not that he’d give a shit, but it’s nice to know that when someone opens the door to swing inwards, he can force his way inside without causing too much of a commotion.

 

Kurosaki is pale and looks deadbeat, eyes glossy and slow. Grimmjow puts a palm on the door, should the kid get any ideas. “You and I need to fucking talk,” he spits, and gestures inwards. Kurosaki doesn’t indicate that he’s even understood what’s just been said to him, but backs amicably into the room, so that Grimmjow doesn’t have to take measures. He shoves the door shut, its metal hinges whining loudly.

 

They stand opposite each other, Kurosaki straightening slightly, like he’s coming into a fight he’ll lose, but has to try. It’s pathetic, Grimmjow thinks, in the midst of the swirl of emotion’s he’s experiencing.

 

“You wanna tell me what the _fuck_ happened in there today?” he says, and steps up closer to the kid. Kurosaki stares him straight in the eye now.

 

“I wasn’t the only one who went off down memory lane,” he murmurs after a moment’s quiet breathing, glaring, albeit weakly. “And I know you’ve read my file, Grimmjow, so what’re you coming here now for? You’re not fucking _surprised_ , are you?”

 

And he isn’t. Not really. But he knows that beneath being fucked beyond measure, they could’ve been drifting. They could’ve been drifting fucking well. Kurosaki’s the top of his class in combat and strength, even mental, despite -- that. Grimmjow hasn’t matched with anyone since Nel, knows that nobody can handle it, that you gotta be balanced as a unit for the left and right hemispheres to even calibrate and synch. They did that. Grimmjow saw Kurosaki as a kid, shielding his sisters, clear as day. He could smell death and debris, feel the spatter of rain. Him and Nel were well suited to each other, but her memories were fog, thick and dense, seen through odd lightning.

 

Kurosaki pulls in a sharp breath, startling Grimmjow out of his thoughts. “Anyway, it was stupid even sparring with you. At least nothing happened today,” he says, averting his eyes, like he’s fringing the discussion now, like he’s scared. Grimmjow’s so surprised at the sudden turn of events that he barks an odd laugh, off-kilter sounding.

 

“Oh no,” he says, and pokes Kurosaki’s shoulder harshly, backing him into a corner. “Nah, you don’t get to pull that shit on me and then tell me you fuckin’ quit. You ain’t that much of a pussy, or are you, Kurosaki? Ain’t the type of kid that your father’d proud of.”

 

Kurosaki snarls, slapping Grimmjow’s hand away in a roundabout of violent emotion. “What the hell do you know?” he spits. “Besides, this isn’t about my old man, this is about  _you_. You’re scared that you can’t deliver ‘cause he singled you out. You’ve been out of it for five years, and just because it suits you now to go blame someone else -- I didn’t goddamn do this alone, you were as lucid to me as I was to you.”

 

Grimmjow punches him.

 

No qualms, no thought, he just does. Kurosaki, who’s all pale, reels, looking shocked, but is quick on his feet against Grimmjow, who’s got a few stones and a beat off on him, and kicks his feet out beneath him, pulling him down in a manner that he’s sure the kid picked up from watching Grimmjow’s earlier spars. They drop to the floor in a mess of harsh breathing and clicking teeth, sprawling limbs.

 

“Fucking -- “ Grimmjow begins, and reaches for Kurosaki, crooking his elbow, knows he could get a good split in Kurosaki’s right eyebrow if he doesn’t miss --

 

“We’re redoing the session tomorrow,” Kurosaki pants, and blocks Grimmjow’s elbow, catching the blunt of it in the midst of his palm.

 

And that’s that, Grimmjow realizes, and halts. The anger drains out of him, bloodlike, thick and mixing with water. “Ya got a little heart beneath your cowardice, then?” he mutters, and fights to untangle himself from Kurosaki, violently at the same time that it’s everything but.

 

The kid snorts, ” _Tche_ , fuck you. Don’t get lost again.”

 

He doesn’t reply until he’s managed to make it to the door. “Same goes for you. I’ll kill ya if you do.”

 

* * *

 

Grimmjow meets Isshin when he comes from dinner. He’s stopped just before his own door, when he notices the Captain coming towards him from the other direction, from the docks, Grimmjow knows. It isn’t so much that he chooses to stop and twist around for Isshin by own volition, that he does it because the drawn tight expression slanted across Isshin’s face tells him that he probably should.

 

“Captain,” Grimmjow greets. The plastic zip close clutched in his palm rustles when he squeezes it.

 

Isshin nods. “Ranger,” he says. It’s an aversion, conscious at that. “Are you alright?”

 

“Just peachy. Don’t have to check up on me, ya know.”

 

“I know,” Isshin says. “Nasty swelling Ichigo got. You should be worse for wear.”

 

Grimmjow chuckles, stretches. “Sure, got a few sore ribs, I guess. He’s creative, even if he doesn’t hit as hard as you do.”

 

There’s a swipe of a smile on Isshin’s face, there and gone again. “It’s my son going out there,” he says, with sudden somberness. “I know he can handle it, just see to it that you can as well.”

 

Grimmjow is about to sneer back, _the fuck do you think,_ _old man._ But he doesn’t. He shrugs.

 

“Sure thing, Cap. I’ll handle him like fine china.”

 

“Just don’t get hit one too many times in the face, Jaegerjaques,” Isshin says, as parting, though there’s something seldom in his eye, a spark of good humor; “You know where that right hook comes from.”

 

* * *

 

Ishida looks about as jittery as they come, when he surveys them being dressed. Grimmjow rolls his eyes. “Don’t go be the downer in this, Ishida. Definitely don’t need two of you runnin’ ‘round me off your rockers.” He pointedly glances over at Ichigo, who snorts.

 

“Shut up, Jaegerjaques,” he says, and pulls on his gloves.

 

“You’ll know every mean thing I wanna say to you before the day’s over, Kurosaki. Sure you’re up for it?”

 

The kid raises an eyebrow at him, but dismisses replying, instead moving around carefully in his suit. “All good, guys,” he says, smiling at the technicians who’ve strapped him in. They bow lightly, one bumps fists with him, and then they pull back, inching slowly out of the room, emptying like a tank of fish slithering out along the walls. Grimmjow pops his neck both left and right, and stretches. The suit gels to him, slotting perfectly into the crevices of his body.

 

“Well,” Ishida mutters, and pushes his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. “It can’t possibly go worse than it did yesterday.” He twists on his heel, and stalks out of the room.

 

They’re alone, quiet, for a moment, remaining undisturbed in their own thoughts, private, not up for share. A few remaining technicians come in again eventually to tell them that the Command Bridge would like them to finalize everything.

 

Grimmjow looks over to Ichigo. “Don’t fuck this up now,  _Ichigo_.”

 

He ain’t an olive branch man, this is as good as it gets. Ichigo slants a half smile. “Likewise,  _Grimmjow_.”

 

It isn’t a long walk to the Conn-Pod, ready to deploy just across the space. Dock 7 is half isolated from the other docks, a little to the left of the large space of the Shatterdome. The jostling noise of the crowd that’s gathered far down on the platform is only just reaching them as Grimmjow walks point out towards their Jaeger. Yet unnamed.

 

Stepping into the Pod today is -- better, somehow. Like the bile’s receded from the hollow in his throat, and his gut isn’t twisting, wormlike, anymore. Ishida had a point, he guesses, they can’t do worse than they did yesterday. Two pilots dropping dead in the water would be that, but he doesn’t even feel jinx-worried at that. He just steps into the Pod, breathing ethanol and oil and something that distinctly is not fear. The helmet is pushing down around him, but it doesn’t bother him today like it did yesterday. He breathes, and steps onto the foot panel, which locks around him momentarily.

 

“Pilots?” Isshin comes on, via their comm.

 

“Captain,” Grimmjow greets, curt, and adjusts himself beneath his harness, now lowered down on him, weighing on his shoulders heavy.

 

“Sir,” says Ichigo. He’s still, but not unnaturally so, when Grimmjow slips a glance his way.

 

“Alright, kids, I don’t want a repeat scene of what happened yesterday. You could’ve blasted this whole place apart.”

 

“It won’t be an issue, Sir,” Grimmjow bites. If they’re lucky, at least. He can hear Isshin’s quiet conversing with the rest of the Command Bridge. He tries to relax - sink into the cacophony of noises from his mic, and what’s filtering through the Mark-3’s sensitive sound system. He used to be loose limbed and cocky, kills figurative notches in his belt, and attempting to find that feeling, as it’s been lost -- well, pin, haystack.

 

He shoves a few levers around and adjusts at the rotating pin on the side of his helmet the light and contrast of his visage. Ishida’s quiet breathing is all he hears, for a moment. And then.

 

“Sequence started, security protocol engaged. I’m initiating the Neural Handshake in 15 --- “ Ishida’s voice comes through, through bitten teeth. Grimmjow barely has the time to settle down for the drop. Might as well.

 

The warp is always a neural stumble, the transcendence into a literal co-existence unlike anything reachable to man under normal circumstances. For a moment, this is what you see -- it is what you realize, superiority. Then you stumble like a broken hangman through a wind tunnel of memories, flooding, seeing. You are small, in the face of the mental and physical impact of having another’s memories and instincts and crevices shoved down your throat. He sees children play catch through fog, sees a boy with a bloodied tooth and a scowl stepping up to fight back. Sees a raging Kaiju shovel rock debris and human waste around the seaside with clarity unlike anything.

 

Grimmjow regains his own gasping for air, body arching backwards for the impact of the Neural Bridge being gapped. Everything is perfectly balanced, entities on a scale weighing in harmoniously; they’re only out of position for the moment of connection. Grimmjow heaves himself up standing, momentarily disoriented before realizing the how’s and the what’s again. It’s happening. It just is, the flow of water.

 

He realigns them properly, as Ichigo positions himself equally, face betraying far less than his thoughts manage to do.

 

“You’re lining up well so far,” Ishida notes, somewhat troubled still. Grimmjow hears him, more than he sees it on the credits rolling along their monitors, how the technician pushes a few buttons and calibrates their health readings to match up with the Jaeger’s eval system.

 

They simultaneously prod at each other.

 

Thoughts conjoined, a steady stream of an overlapping conscious intervening with his own thinking. It’s familiar, knee jerk aching, but a muscle unused for years. Grimmjow concentrates on synching up physically; the positional is fine, and given they’re roughly equal in physical measurements and scores, the Mark-3 runs slick and spinning, twisting so ridiculously easy it’s unlike anything he’s ever driven, vehicle or otherwise.

 

It’s exhilarating, and not something he can shun from the front of his mind, going on an epinephrine high that both paralyzes and gets him going like a chemical concoction gone way the fuck off. They turn. _They_.

 

They’re drifting. They’re drifting fucking good.

 

* * *

 

Grimmjow pulls his helmet off with fingers far more steady then he’d imagine they’d be, probably given the mixture of mental issues he can count off the top of his head that he intimately knows these days. But his hands are lightly sweaty beneath his gloves, nothing more than that, and he steps out of position and off the dock without stumbling, giving in to the luring exhaustion prodding like nails at the back of his conscious. Ichigo’s already at the back of the Pod, helmet in the bend of his elbow, hair pushed out of his face in a lick of sweat.

 

Grimmjow stretches, and cocks his co-pilot an eyebrow. “If you’re waitin’ on a round of applause, I think you’d better run off to your clique than be sat with me.”

 

“Eh, I’m waiting for you. Walking the elderly across the hanging bridge is gentlemanly, I’ve heard.”

 

Ichigo grins. Grimmjow flips him off. ”Can’t quite figure out if you’re stupid or just bratty, and I’ve seen yer deepest desires ‘n dreams from inside your head.”

 

“Still younger and fresher than you, asshole,” Ichigo retorts, and knocks on the bolted back entrance, the clang from his rap of knuckles resounding within the Pod, and leans against the farthest wall whilst a dull roll of footsteps approach them from outside. Grimmjow snorts.

 

“Younger ‘n greener, Kurosaki. Besides, you’re the lucky shit who’ll be moving all yer stuff from first to sixth this evening,” he pauses as a mouth of passage yawns open, and smirks at his counterpart, “And seein’ as you’re so young and fresh, you’re movin’ by yourself. I see anyone help you carry anything, and that stuff’s either gettin’ burnt or thrown out the second it goes through my door.”

 

He steps out, far more pleased with the grumble of stringy curses that follows him, than the round of applause that greets him.

 

* * *

 

He receives a satellite call when he’s finished a leisurely workout post-dinner. A kid barely Kurosaki’s age, with thick rimmed glasses and a gap tooth, comes running for him with the science branch’s thickest, oldest Iridium satphone slippery in one palm. The flaps of his lab coat reminds Grimmjow of something more sterile than necessarily meant to be his instant connection.

 

“Mr Jaegerjaques,” pants the trainee, and passes the phone, “Please connect by pressing the “OK” button, Dr. Unohana is on standby from Hong Kong.”

 

Grimmjow wipes his face down with the back of his fist, nods at the kid, and presses the green symbol down, worn to a smudge of color on an unsteady button of rubber. He puts it tentatively to the shell of his ear. “‘Lo?” he says, because what the fuck is he supposed to say. He never knows, and it’s still something that wrenches in his chest, squirms, like black matter, this long since.

 

“Grimmjow.” Unohana’s voice is soothing. A deep, soft reassurance.

 

“How’s it goin’, doc?” He paces around the still barely swiping punching drop bag he’s been going at.

 

“I know you often phrase it as to include my well being, and I’m flattered -- I’m well, thank you. How are you?”

 

He hears the simmering “ _but_ ” in her words, that she saw through Grimmjow’s attempt at making his casual approach about here, rather than hitting where it hurts initially, a long time ago, yet still humors it. He can’t decide if he should be thankful for that still, but he’ll never be pathetic enough to call her out on what he does out of plain cowardice.

 

He takes a tick of seconds to reply, eyes raking over the once more empty gym, pondering the question, though not really. He laughs, low in his throat. “Tough question,” he murmurs. “I dunno, it feels really fuckin’ weird returning to active duty, I ain’t gonna lie. Never thought I was gonna do it, y’know.”

 

“I heard of your reinstatement, Ranger. Though I’m not entirely sure a congratulations is truly in order.”

 

“Congrats on savin’ the world for another few weeks at a time, maybe?”

 

The PPDC Chief of Medicine hums, neither affirmative nor declining. Grimmjow steels himself, because he knows that’s the end of that. “So -- “ he trails, and curses himself inwardly for being such a fucking coward, fucking things up on the daily.

 

“The truth is, as you know, that Nelliel’s case is -- complicated. I have always cautioned you, not to be too optimistic, though I know that it would probably have benefitted your state of mind. Neuroscience is as vast and unknown to us as, pardon my comparison -- The Breach. Years of research barely does us any good. It lets us scrape on its surface, and tentatively form theories, but come the end of the day, I cannot say that I have become any less perplexed than I was when this began.”

 

Grimmjow sits down onto a pilates ball, balancing himself straight on the balls of his feet. “I know you’re tryin’ to wrap this up into pretty words so that you can worry less about the state of my brain and more about Nel’s, but ya don’t have to worry about givin’ me the hard truth as it is, doc,” he says, and balls a fist, clipped nails biting into the curl of his palm. “I was there, still am, some days.”

 

The mill of voices that’s previously sounded a soothing murmur in Unohana’s background, bounces on the connection. “Actually,” Unohana says, slightly uneven. Grimmjow gets up quickly, and walks about the room, worrying that he might lose her.

 

The connection stabilizes, Unohana’s voice remains in his ear. “I called to say that despite none of my team being none the wiser of the true nature of her condition, she has rapidly improved over the past few weeks. Kisuke was urgently called here on business, as you might remember, and though I will never know what his brand of science infers medically, I have never seen her lucid for as long as she has been now, thanks to his therapy.”

 

Grimmjow halts. The connection fizzes in his ear. “This supposed to benefit my state of mind now?” he asks, half joking, weakly. A thousand different scenarios are quickly populating his mind, some resurfacing from where they’ve been buried in his skull for the past five years -- that his former partner is gonna be fucking okay. He hasn’t been able to hope for that since -- since ever, truth be told.

 

“Like I said, I have never, nor will I ever, induce anything such as hope under false pretenses. We barely know anything, less about whether this improvement is temporary. But yes, I sincerely hope that this will benefit your state of mind, Grimmjow. I’m hopeful you may get a few minutes of screen time with her soon. Right now, we’re holding off mainly to be cautious. I have no doubt that you will prove to be a significant party in her recovery, but as it is right now, inciting the memories that seeing you will undoubtedly do might do more harm than good.”

 

Grimmjow knows that ain’t what most people want to hear, but fuck it, because he isn’t most people. He pulls a deep breath. “Sure, doc, I get it. Anytime you feel I can do some good, you know where to find me.”

 

“I do. Be careful out there, Ranger. I promise to call as soon as I have any developments for you.”

 

Grimmjow hears the line go flat and quiet with a sense of that his chest might constrict too tightly around his lungs, but for the first time since he woke up in Lima wrapped in gauze, trapped in a constant, borderline state of disillusion and tunnel vision, it isn’t in panic, and his shoulder doesn’t tug and ache whenever he remembers Nel’s face, flashing between her small smiles and lax in a state of forcibly induced coma.

 

* * *

 

He comes back to a heap of sparse furniture falling into a neat line outside of his door. Ichigo is parked atop a ratty old IKEA drawer, arms and ankles crossed, frown imminent. He looks up to see Grimmjow approach from the round of the corner, and grimaces. Grimmjow surveys the load of belongings. “That all you got?” he says, and peeks into a paper bag on the floor, inspecting the mix of sweatpants, long sleeved shirts and training gear peeking up, neatly sorted.

 

Ichigo grumbles. “And a few mental scars from the creepy dudes moving about this floor. That freak Nnoitra had no qualms stopping to tell me how much of floor 6’s bitch I’ll be.”

 

“You land a hook anywhere near his face?” Grimmjow replies, and hauls up his key, in the midst of hoisting the bags of clothes over his right shoulder, still alright.

 

“Might’ve, if he didn’t look like he was gonna take a bite out of me if I came any closer.”

 

Grimmjow barks out a bout of laughter. “Yeah, he’s a fuckin’ creep, I’d stay far away.” He swings the door open wide, and clamps on inside. The monitor at the far end of the main room glows softly in blues and greens, indicating no activity, The Breach still intact, its rim sleeping. He motions inwards. “C’mon then, get yer pussy ass inside. I’m actually makin’ an effort, not throwin’ you to the wolves.”

 

Ichigo tentatively shuffles inside, long limbs and craning neck around his commercialized drawer, immediately inspecting Grimmjow’s bunk as though it might possibly be infested with something. “Oi,” he warns, “‘S probably tidier than anything you’ve ever subjected yourself to before, back off.”

 

Ichigo puts the drawer down in the center of the room, and turns to go gather the rest of his stuff. He stops just as he rounds the corner, twisting around to grin shit eating, fuckin’ instigator. “Wasn’t saying anything, Grimmjow. Sore spot?”

 

“Brat,” Grimmjow mutters, and dumps his bags of clothes in the closet, shutting the door forcibly. “You’re gettin’ the top bunk, and I’ll make it livin’ hell for ya.”

 

If the kid colors, as if his mind immediately hops to something it wasn’t meant to be, Grimmjow can’t know, because they’re not connected on any mental level, but he smirks through the sudden confounding spot he finds himself in. Limbo, between knowing exactly what to do, and exactly what not to do. The kid reddens further, clears his throat, and disappears outside again. He takes a long time carrying the rest of his shit inside, saying nothing as he does, so Grimmjow decides to abandon his thoughts in the wake of his victory.

 

* * *

 

Over the next few days, the entire Anchorage Shatterdome hums with the thrum of what is to come. Rangers and staff members alike mill about like nothing’s on the map, like it won’t happen. It’s a tense sort of relaxation situating in the air about sparring matches and impromptu boxing bouts in the gym.

 

Grimmjow and Ichigo do two more calibration sequences, and are pulled out of them to do back-to-back psych evals and interval drops barely out of the Neural Bridge. Grimmjow doesn’t intimately know the training scheme, but he has been on the giving end of some of it. He knows what it’s for -- the quicker you’re abruptly pulled out of the Bridge, the quicker you should be able to shake the remnants of haziness and spring into action. It’s been carefully developed as an exercise over the years of failed training runs, and nowadays, the cut of pilots who make it, are able to withstand the pressure of performing physically stressing exercises without the neural weight also bearing down on them.

 

Grimmjow slumps down on a bench stretched out beside the boxing ring. He unwinds the wrappings on his knuckles, and breathes deeply, up, down, up down, short snorts of breath through his nose, exhale through the mouth. Ichigo hangs on the elastic lines, boring down on the top one with his weight put into his arms. He pants.

 

“Okay there, champ?” Grimmjow asks, tantalizing, and smirks. Truth is, Ichigo matches him too well. It simultaneously thrills him, knots his stomach, and makes his competitive streak harshen. Kid’s half his experience, too young, he shouldn’t be able to hold Grimmjow off like he does. Especially not in hand-to-hand, which he knows, isn’t what Ichigo does well. Reckless and athletic, not sturdy and calculating, like he should really be as a Ranger.

 

Ichigo nods, and stretches his arms above his head, holding them there to stretch triceps, to breathe through his entire body. “Strictly boxing isn’t really my thing, ‘s all.”

 

Grimmjow catches the edge of a bruise in bloom on his left hip by accident, more than he searches for it, truly. “Oh yeah?” he replies, distant, still searching Ichigo’s exposed hip, the ride up of his shirt, creasing over the jut of bone.

 

“Yeah, I’m an old martial artist, isolated hand-to-hand isn’t what I’ve trained.”

 

He doesn’t notice Grimmjow’s staring, and he stops, forces himself away when he catches up to his own thoughts. Jesus fucking christ, he doesn’t have any scraps of dignity left, does he.

 

Initially, it’s a small bell that rings with clarity in the back of his mind. A noise, shrill, but low, that sets him off, without him really understanding why. Then, the lights in the gym dim, the electricity that’s bright enough to blind automatically lowered into a soft hum of darkness. Then the red lights go off on the main monitor situated large and looming on the far wall. Movement in The Breach. 

 

Ichigo stills, literally melds into a statuesque picture of contained emotion. Grimmjow gets up to his feet slowly, and pulls his hair back. They look at each other, simultaneously, like they know. Perhaps they do, he thinks, though that’s certainly far above the capacities of co-pilots, no matter how tight they may be. Ichigo lets his arms down, his knuckles are still tightly wrapped, but he’s paled, no longer red across the bridge of his nose from working out. Grimmjow can’t sense nervousness, though.

 

“All Rangers report to their docks,” comes the static female voice of the system. So no specifics, they’re not specifically singled out. That means this isn’t going to be a one Jaeger job.

 

“Let’s go,” Grimmjow says. Ichigo nods, and bows out of the ring.

 

* * *

 

“Alright, Rangers,” comes Isshin’s voice over the mic, “No part of this is a drill. If you had time to read the scan, you’d know that this is about two Category 3’s. If you didn’t have that time, you know now that it’s about two Category 3’s. That means that I’ll be sending three of you out. I want Ripple out there as defense along the Miracle Mile, and a two-man point.”

 

Grimmjow glances to his far left, where  _White Ripple’s_ Conn-Pod is docked and ready. “Yes Sir,” says Kuchiki over their joint connection, nothing betraying in her tone of voice. Then again, it seldom does. She’s tiny, barely reaching Grimmjow’s chest, but he damn well admires her character. _Aw, everyone likes Rukia_ , comes Kurosaki’s cloying thoughts. Grimmjow flips him off inside of his glove.

 

“Given that Sakanade arguably is our most brutally kitted Mark-2, and slimmer and lighter than Ripple is, I want it to lead Kurosaki and Jaegerjaques. The Mark-3 is the quickest one yet, but I’d rather you drop to centering, until you feel that you’re well synched enough to run the formation with another Jaeger properly.”

 

“Aw, Cap’n, ya flatter,” comes Hirako, and Grimmjow rolls his eyes at having to be patronized by the laziest Ranger the world’s ever seen. The fact that Hirako is one of the best strategists and fighters in the Jaeger program doesn’t remotely make up for his stringent, annoying personality. “We’ll take good care o’ the Mark-3. Make sure it’s the smoothest maiden voyage since the Titanic’s.”

 

“That one crashed, dumbass. You ever seen the movie?” Grimmjow mutters, and adjusts his helmet.

 

“Shut up, moron,” comes Hiyori’s voice, too deeply feminine for being blonde, tiny and gawking, it always disturbs him. Then again, before he retorts, he isn’t at all sure whether the barb was intended for Grimmjow or for her own co-pilot. It’s often Hirako at the far end of her insults. He decides against poking the sleeping bear in  _Sakanade’s_  Pod. Monkey, whatever. That tiny child could probably kill him from far across the Shatterdome if she were given the slightest inclination to. _Freak_.

 

“Now now, kids,” Isshin warns. “Play nice, like I know you can. If you are all clear on what we’re doing here, we’re deploying in fifty nine -- “

 

Grimmjow feels the adrenaline cloy his blood already, spreading like wild fire. Two Category 3’s. Their op’s codename: _Shark tank._ Cheesy, fitting, and a couple of months ago, he’d been humming the Jaws theme and watching the quiet streams of water swirl in the depths of the Mariana Trench, right before crack into the foundation of the earth. The Pacific Rim.

 

“Oi, Ichigo,” he says, and looks to his co-pilot, who is motionless, concentrated, in position. He glances over, nods. “Don’t fuck this up now.”

 

The kid grins, a little bordering maniacal. Grimmjow could probably say he fell in love right there, no qualms and squirms, but that’s so far outside of the boundaries he’s set up for himself, so he doesn’t.

 

* * *

 

 _Sakanade_  takes the blunt of one of the second Kaiju’s claws, which tears a haggard line into its back. Grimmjow hears far away Hirako’s pained hiss.

 

“Fuck!” Ichigo exclaims, stress evident now, and holds down and onto their own monster, which is fighting, snapping jaws and claws biting into the thick ocean floor to push back onto them. His jaw is working, and Grimmjow is holding on to the Kaiju, but reaching for his own control panel.

 

“Don’t let it up,” he warns, “I’m gonna let go on my side, think you can handle it? I’m tellin’ Hirako we’re comin’ for them, Ripple’s gonna have to hold it as we go.”

 

Kurosaki nods, body straining, as the Kaiju roars, and pushes harder. They skid back, but Kurosaki, who looks like he’s got half of Iron Man’s fucking strength to call miraculously up on, holds steady, steady, and wrenches it into a headlock beneath the Mark-3’s left arm. Grimmjow drops his stance, and scratches at his mic, tuning it into the three man space that they’re sharing with the others. “Kuchiki, we’re gonna try one of those nifty cannons we’ve got, blast this bitch over to you and go drop Hirako’s. Sit tight, we’re just off shore.”

 

“Leave it to us,” Kuchiki’s voice affirms, and behind them, sixty five degrees south, _Ripple_ makes the ground shake. Grimmjow taps at his control pad, searching for the command he knows he wants to give. “Got it, Ichigo?” he asks, half out of the corner of his mouth, still searching, panic settling into his chest.

 

Ichigo doesn’t reply, but Grimmjow hears him well enough, panting beneath the pressure of the Kaiju, which roars, high pitched, and sends them reeling, its nose crashing into Ichigo’s side in a maneuver they weren’t expecting. They’re thrown hastily backwards, the Mark-3 staggering to keep its balance as Ichigo groans in pain, having recieved the blunt of it, and has to let the Kaiju slip from beneath his arm. “Fuck!” he yells, and throws himself forward along Grimmjow to counter the sudden shift in balance. The Mark-3 responds instantly, and thank Jesus and all of his devotees, because Grimmjow has to start over. It isn’t good that they’re now without the advantage of literally being on top, but fuck, a little breathing space, and maybe he can find that fucking plasma cannon.

 

The ocean squalls, roars, beneath the heavy rain which is always incited by the Breach spitting another few monsters out. Grimmjow taps out a command. The panel blinks sleepily at him in affirmative, and something in their Jaeger shifts. Something in his side. “Alright,” he says, and they straighten out, comes into position, and sees the mass of Category 3 sea monster roar at them, before it throws itself forward in their direction.

 

He counts, nine, eight, six, three, the numbers are a jumble of juxtapositional things, but the surge of energy shaking down his side of the Jaeger is unmistakably nuclear, and it’s building, and Ichigo knows and sees and hears his thoughts, coming into synch, positioning --

 

The Kaiju slams into them, and Grimmjow slams his fist into its throat. Three, one, two --

 

The force of the blast splits the creature’s throat apart. Ichigo reacts quicker than he does, and they manage to stumble out of the way for when its vocal chord severs, and the hole which has severed its head almost cleanly from its body, spurts a thick stream of blue into the black of the ocean. Grimmjow looks to his side dumbly, as the Kaiju stumbles once, twice, and sinks into the ocean, unmistakably unable to get up again.

 

He can, without feeling overly stupid, ask, what the _fuck_ just happened.

 

Over their shared comm, he finally gets that  _Ripple_  has left their line, and come to  _Sakanade’s_  aid, because over the mic, he hears Abarai erupt into shouting in triumph, and distantly, he hears Hiyori give Hirako a real smackdown for being “reckless, stupid and a fucking idiot who’s never possessed a brain large enough for fighting monsters, fucking idiot”.

 

“Pop the champagne, ‘cause we just smacked this bitch into its next life,” He mutters, somewhat dumbfounded still. Ichigo barks a laugh.

 

* * *

 

They’re met by wild applause ringing through the Shatterdome as they step off the elevator, joining the other piloting teams in the midst of a circle forming and filling in steadily around them. Hirako grins like the fat cat that just got a bowl of cream for itself, despite limping, supported half by Abarai. Hiyori looks sour, sticking close to his side, and Kuchiki comes for Ichigo, faintly smiling. They high-five, rather than embrace, which really was Grimmjow’s initial expectation.

 

“Looked good out there, midget,” Ichigo says, through a lopsided smile.

 

Kuchiki kicks after him. “Not so bad yourself, jerk. Nice fire power.”

 

“Indeed, that was some blast. A little unanticipated, I’ll have to notify Tech branch of that.”

 

Isshin works himself free of the crowd, and all of them, bar Hirako, come up in a simultaneous salute. Isshin nods at them. “The Captain-Commander is very satisfied with how you ran the Mark-3 today, Rangers.” He looks to Grimmjow, and then to Ichigo, specifically. There’s a smile worrying in the corner of his mouth, that he’s not quite letting out. Grimmjow remains passive. “Well done, to all of you.”

 

Isshin looks around the room, which has quieted. “Reset the clock!” He exclaims. “You may return to your tasks, everyone. I’ll see you at dinner, where I’m sure the mood will be a little more festive than it will be around here. We have a lot of work to do.”

 

Grimmjow slips from the crowd, sees no real reason to stay behind and kick it with people he won’t really hang out with during any circumstance. Epinephrine is still coursing through him, makes him jittery, twitching hands and flacking eyes. He makes for the elevator before anyone else manages to hop on, and presses for the sixth floor quickly.

 

He makes a beeline for the shower as soon as he can shut himself in his bunk, not really sure what is going on with him, just knowing it’s all too much to pluck apart right now, when he’s still riding on this kind of high. They’d downed a Category 3 barely a week into being co-pilots. For anyone, that’s fucking huge, for Grimmjow, ripping the curtain shut behind him, it provides an odd cavity in the space of his chest. He scrubs at his hair, at his sore muscles, and know that there will be no blood anywhere on him, that his dreams of ripping his shoulder from its socket, watch the muscle melt from the bone, peel off like the skin off of an orange -- it’s fever hallucinating.

 

The water bounces between being too hot, and too cold, which means that someone above him is using his shower. Fucker. Grimmjow leans against the far wall in the stall, palms resting on the pronounciations of his hips. He thinks of Kurosaki’s bruises, and that it really doesn’t implicate shit that he’s got a dark bloom on his hip, that Grimmjow knows he got a low hit a little too low for it to be going for the kidney. He knows he jabbed it there, and yet, he sees the ride up of the shirt and he sees his own fingers closing over Kurosaki’s hip hard enough to leave those bruises. Turn his fingers inwards and hold Ichigo down, put his knuckles in the wake of his own red imprints and brand a bruise there.

 

He hisses, as the water goes hot again, and reaches between his legs, as though it’s unconscious, when it’s everything but. He knows he’s hard already, jutting out from his body. And he knows why, it’s been skirting on the edge of his waking mind ever since he saw Ichigo pull Abarai down and into the mat for the first time. A coil in the low of his stomach, excitement building. He strokes himself quick and harsh under the water until he’s twitching for it, going farther into his own head -- splaying Kurosaki open, know intimately how the fight in him is bounded back into a tight string, lick in the dip of his spine, bite at the stairs of his ribs. He palms his cock harder, strokes wetness from the tip down and coating the head, going slow, slow, then fast.

 

He could blame it on adrenaline. He will, he’s too much of a coward to do anything else, too wound around himself and his ego. He pants, lightly, tipping his head backwards and into the stream of water that’s now a little colder, adequate. He tugs over the head, forming a fist, dragging slowly down over his dick, all slick now with precome, despite the water. He drags it out, and sees himself holding Ichigo’s wrists trapped, fuck him languid, press more bruises into his thighs and watch him beg.

 

Grimmjow comes violently, swearing, his palm shaking, mind neither here nor there on what the fuck he’s really doing.

 

* * *

 

He muses. It isn’t normally a task in which he chooses to indulge, but, the world’s probably coming to an end while he’s shoveling his rice and bleak Alaska pollock, extensive plate of vegetables, down his throat like he’s an actual dying man, so what the hell. He’s sat next to Abarai, in the midst of Ichigo’s group of choice, which -- he doesn’t get, in truth. He’d received an odd bulge of eyes from the table across, Luppi looking at him haughtily. Grimmjow had cocked an eyebrow. Szayel waved a discreet hand, had looked more sadistically pleased than anything else. Fucking creep. Grimmjow returns to being on the outskirts of the conversation as someone says his name, and grunts avoiding responses when he’s not chewing out a mouthful.

 

He thinks of Kurosaki, quiet sleeper, only tossing in fits. Definitely calmer than Grimmjow himself is, on the odd night. It fucking sucks that he’s coming to these insights because he’s monitoring the kid. Takes note of his morning routines, of how he sleeps, how he talks shit and how he goes quiet at length whenever someone breaches something that seems to get to him. It’s creepy. He knows it is, tough man, and frowns down onto his near empty plate.

 

“Oi, Jaegerjaques, you even with us?” Abarai barks, and shoves an elbow into Grimmjow’s side. He bats him away, glaring. “Aren’t you dyin’ for some firm male attention, Abarai,” he snaps, “What?”

 

Abarai smirks, eating shit, and shrugs. “Can’t take a jab, big guy? I was askin’, ya can’t call yer Jaeger by its production name. That ain’t the way to treat her.”

 

Grimmjow looks to Ichigo, who’s got a somewhat perplexed swipe across his features. Grimmjow hasn’t even thought about it. Jade Lance was already named, after her special feature, limited to her only, a specially designed Mark-2, meant to be perfectly balanced between offense and defense. The perfect midfielder. The Mark-3 has many special features, but only cheesy ones. You can’t name your war machine Plasma Cannon, he draws a line somewhere. He shrugs a shoulder.

 

“Fuck should I know. Never named a lady b’fore. Think we missed the opportunity too, you’re supposed to do it right after its maiden voyage.”

 

“Huh. You a fisherman, Jaegerjaques?”

 

He jabs towards Abarai with his fork. “We’re in fucking Anchorage, Alaska. You really stupid enough to not have picked it up  _here_ , if ya didn’t know before?”

 

Ichigo chuckles, along with Kuchiki, and a large portion of the table. “C’mon, enough,” the kid says, as though he’s quietening his lesser. “You can’t force a name, it’ll come.”

 

Grimmjow shrugs, knows that it’s perennial bad luck that comes with piloting something that hasn’t been named, but also can’t come up with something that doesn’t sound ripped from the worst box office flicks he knows. He’ll call her Sally, or something -- which isn’t less terrible, but whatever. At least until she receives a proper name. It’s a lot more dangerous going out into something completely unnamed, than it is going out in something that isn’t officially baptized. He’s not terribly superstitious. Just edging on it.

 

“The next Kaiju she rips the throat from can give her a name.”

 

* * *

 

The next Kaiju comes five weeks later. Its codename is _Pantera_ , with long, branching claws and jaws as wide and as harsh as a panther’s. It’s a small Category 3, but viper quick. It claws a hole straight through Ichigo’s side, tearing with it the back plate and a chunk of the Pod, the proverbial throat. Grimmjow feels it, a shot of pain, blinding, across their Neural Bridge. The system is beeping in panic, frayed wires torn off and swinging, Ichigo bleeding from the juncture in his shoulder and down his chest. Grimmjow manages to stumble away, steer it away with a combination of an overhead punch and a boring down with the Jaeger’s sharp heel, giving  _Latigo_  a chance to reach them before they’re thrashed.

 

They were careless. Grimmjow knows that; underestimated how they’d be matched in speed.  _Latigo_  is quicker, a lightly armored Mark-2 of the first generation, and through an extension usually rolled up along its sleeve, it can harden it into a whipcord tough enough to slice through a Kaiju’s skin. He hears, later, that it does so, after he’s managed, with Ichigo bleeding thickly and only half conscious, to steer them back close enough to base that they can be picked up by a inflatable emergency boat, roiling on the angry waves.

 

He docks the Mark-3, letting Command shut it off as he shrugs out of his harness, steps off the platform, just in time for Ichigo to sag powerless into the equipment still holding his weight. Grimmjow bites down on his teeth, grinding hard, and shrugs Ichigo onto his weaker shoulder, using his stronger to steady his body upwards, hoping to cease the sluggish powering of blood through the gape of wounds on him down long enough for a med team to take care of him. He murmurs nonsense again, shit that doesn’t mean anything, to Ichigo’s ragdoll upper body.

 

“ _Pantera_ , huh,” Ichigo mumbles, thick as though he’s biting down around his tongue, swelling in his mouth, vocal chords swelling and scratching. “Kinda catchy, better’n  _White Ripple_...”

 

Grimmjow tries laughing. It stocks in his throat, and comes out forced -- clipped. “Don’t talk, ya moron. Got to look at that wound on your throat first.”

 

Ichigo doesn’t, but he slumps further onto Grimmjow, and can’t hear the shriek that the Kaiju emits when  _Latigo_  slam dunks it straight into fucking tomorrow a few minutes later, when they’re being lowered into the boat. Grimmjow can’t even say he’s particularly sorry it’s Ulquiorra who got to do the honors, that fucker is vicious as a blood thirsting bat, and he’s sure the shreds of the Kaiju will resurface soon enough, quite unrecognizable.

 

* * *

 

He thinks he’ll never pilot again.

 

He thinks he will, as long as Ichigo survives the night.

 

He thinks of Nel, of Lima’s bleach white beaches and Kaiju blue bleeding into the crystalline water. He paces cavities into the floor, this time unharmed, none the worse for wear or tear, whilst Ichigo is put down under and stitched up in the Shatterdome.

 

Isshin comes to sit with him, and pace with him, and it’s the first time that Grimmjow has seen his Captain teeter on the brink. He knows the feeling, sees it, intimate, clawing up Isshin’s throat, a raging animal.

 

He goes over the scenario until all he can think of is the inhumane shriek of the Kaiju ripping into the Mark-3’s -- Pantera’s, side, tugging with it steel that is supposed to be impenetrable, spraying salt water into the smoking systems and fusion cores of the Jaeger’s hundreds and thousands of nuclear and carbon fibre cells. He sees blood stain Ichigo’s suit in douses of vermillion, and puts the balls of his hands in his eyes until he sees stars instead. Until he can properly breathe, still stretched out on a bench outside of Anchorage’s one out of two ER’s.

 

“Don’t blame yourself, Ranger,” Isshin says, at one point, and Grimmjow can barely haul his temper in, refrain from punching the man.

 

“Don’t have to bullshit me to make yerself feel better,” he spits, and gets up to stalk the corridors once more. Isshin says no more post that. Sits quiet, only talks when people from his staff quietly, hurriedly, approach them.

 

 _She’s in there_. Grimmjow rubs at his eyes again, pulls his hair, shifts into a million different sitting positions.  

 

 _But she won’t hear you._ He sits there for a fucking eternity, hours passing in a sludge of anxiety.

 

“Ranger?” Kotetsu slips from the room, quiet, no wasted energy in her movements. She has freshly scrubbed hands, and her expression softens as she sees him. Has to be in a grade A state of emotional mess, then. Not that he’s surprised, should’ve been a wreck too gone to function quite some time ago.

 

“Get some sleep,” Kotetsu says, and puts a hand on his elbow, half mast, to push it down until it hangs limp by his side. “Kurosaki is resting, but his condition is stable, and unless complications arise overnight, he can sleep in his own room tomorrow.”

 

Grimmjow obeys, not because he necessarily gives a shit, but because somewhere, he knows intimately that there is absolutely jack crap that he can do. He can’t sleep naturally, as it happens. Predictable, really, Grimmjow decides, and downs three of his prescribed sleeping pills when he’s twisted in his bunk until the clock’s hit 04:13 AM. It takes a while for them to kick in, but when they finally do, he doesn’t wake until the slanting light of dawn has given way to late morning.

 

* * *

 

When there’s a feeble knock on the door come afternoon, Grimmjow’s got a t-shirt and boxers on after showering after a morning session at the gym, he’s cautious to open it, but won’t check the peep hole before he does.

 

Ichigo slants half a smile at him from beyond the door, throat patched with gauze, arm slung into a cast, immoveable. He’s pallid, skin clammy, but he’s right there, breathing -- radiating a pale warmth, in his own clothes. Grimmjow says nothing, just stands aside so that he can step inside, long legs and tall torso quaking silently with the post-squalls of being drugged and kept asleep whilst being transfused someone else’s blood.

 

“Don’t like to admit it, but that was a bitch,” he croaks, once Grimmjow’s shut the door, and Ichigo has bowed into one of two chairs sitting on the border between their kitchen counter and the bunk beds.

 

And Grimmjow realizes, right there, realization slamming harshly into him, that he can’t do this.

 

That he’s got to do this, or don’t, ever, do it. There’s a suctioning in his gut, and a literal crossroad of choices before him. He can go smack Ichigo’s uninjured arm, say fuck you, and get on with their life, just a little less codependent than he feels that he should be. Or, he could take the leap of faith that he feels will pull him in, spit him out, no chewing, and give in to the feelings erupting, pulled from his throat and breast at moments of clarity. Do what he feels should be done when his fresh partner is close to dying on their second mission.

 

“Kurosaki,” he bites out, and stands a bit off from the kid, who looks up with puzzle. “I want you to do one out of two things now. I want you to shut up and go with it, or push me away and kick me. You get one out of two, if you do both, I’ll punch you in your injured goddamned throat.”

 

Ichigo frowns. “Yeah, alright, hi, Grimmjow, fucking nice to be back and alive,” he snaps, but remains seated, wary.

 

Grimmjow doesn’t have time for this. Or, his cowardice, creeping into his marrow and into the tissue of his lungs, making it hard to breathe, doesn’t have the time for this. It’s either being overwhelmed, pulled under water, or do it. _Don’t think._  

 

He’s across the boxy room in half a second, leans in, and kisses Ichigo.

 

It takes the kid half a second of being motionless, slotted into place, perfectly still, and for Grimmjow to consider jumping from dock 7’s hanging bridge, before Kurosaki, fucker, softens into it. He sighs, and meets Grimmjow halfway, tongue coaxing, leisurely like he’s still on drugs or just really fucking comfortable with the world’s most unexpected event unfolding in his throat. Either way, Grimmjow can’t quite figure which direction it goes in, but he groans, unexpectedness of it all seeping into him, and he bows into Ichigo, places a hand on the wall to his right, and pushes him lightly into it. Ichigo complies, and laps at Grimmjow’s tongue, making noises, stroking a foot up and down the tense tendons in Grimmjow’s own.

 

They break apart to breathe, Grimmjow to look at Ichigo, the kid, to mouth at Grimmjow’s chin, eyes dark, out of sight, fucking tantalizing, like _he knows._

 

“What the fuck is this?” Grimmjow mutters, scraping nails down the wall and shuddering in pleasure. Ichigo snorts. “What, used to taking what you want without receiving some of it too?”

 

He breathes a laugh, not expecting any of it. “No, just really fucking surprised that you’re just going with what I want.”

 

“I’m younger than you, not juvenile, asshole. And don’t inadvertedly presume to know what I want. We’re drift compatible, not permanently connected neurologically. You don’t know what I think all day.” He continues mouthing down Grimmjow’s throat, breathing across stripes of saliva he leaves, filthy, exactly what Grimmjow wants. He shuts his eyes tightly, and feels the coil in his stomach with desire. He’s hard already, fucking Christ.

 

Ichigo pushes at Grimmjow’s side with the arm he can use, gently shoving them apart to some distance. He gestures towards the bed. “Could use that,” he says.

 

Grimmjow waits to lay down until Ichigo’s done so, shirt shrugged over the shoulder where it hasn’t been carved up and hastily sewn together again to fit over his wrapped shoulder, more easily removed from over where he is immobile. He feels large, encompassing the length of Ichigo’s body as soon as he kneels in a bracket across his hips, looking down, seeing what makes his guts drop out, still not really believing -- scratch it, he isn’t stupid, he just doesn’t get it, at all. But Ichigo is enthusiastic, half a mind left on painkillers when he twists his tongue around Grimmjow’s.

 

He’s wary of what this is. A rush of emotion disconnected from rationality. He’s doing this because he’s fucking scared, and really, he shouldn’t. Ichigo is twisting his hips weakly into Grimmjow’s, not an ounce of regret on the planes of his face, cock hard and there, _right there,_ and so he lets it happen because -- he can’t not, defenseless in the face of acting. Fucking cowardly.

 

Grimmjow flicks open the button on Ichigo’s jeans, sitting up a little more straight across his hips, moving slowly in circular motions. The air is humidly thick, he’s aged five years and then he hasn’t, still forcing his head through a t-shirt with ripped seams and looking out onto the stripe of red horizon from the shores of Lima.

 

Ichigo breaks the growing stretch of silence, groaning, bunching his fingers in Grimmjow’s thigh. “You about to continue?” he asks, mildly out of breath, and moves his hand down to where Grimmjow’s boxers tent out obscenely. There is not a thing in the world, then, that would make him relinquish the hook up of Ichigo’s wrist that he does, snapping it out of the air, watching how Ichigo stills, swallowing down air.

 

Grimmjow eases up to allow Ichigo to kick his jeans down to bunch around his ankles, waiting for a few beats, then twisting down to press against the cold of the wall, hot of Ichigo’s side, and kisses him again, hard and none too gentle regarding where there’s a pad of gauze striped to the beat of a pulse and blood. He ruts, one time, harshly, and breathes as erratically as he dares to breathe. Ichigo huffs into his mouth and tugs his wrist free, searching, still somewhat constrained, up past Grimmjow’s hip, past the waistband of his underwear. His cock twitches, a spot of wetness already in the fabric, and he bows his head to lick into the hollow of Ichigo’s shoulder. Ichigo mutters under his breath, a stringent of curses.

 

“I wasn’t about to die on you -- you know,” he says, the kid with the nerve, and twists his wrist just so, to put pressure beneath the head, his fingers on a small cavity in the skin that makes something extricate itself from Grimmjow’s throat that is between a laugh and a groan. “No,” he replies, and cups his own palm over Ichigo’s dick, curved towards his stomach, twitching when he strokes across the fabric, “But I will kill you myself if you don’t shut the fuck up about it right now.”

 

Grimmjow realizes it when pleasure punches him in the gut that it was never going to last, referring to both letting the kid _jack him off_ , and what is well past what he consciously thinks about at the moment. He feels orgasm wriggle in his stomach, wormlike and growing, zaps of lightning that makes odd parts of him tick. “Jesus,” he breathes, and drives up into Ichigo’s palm, slick. He tugs harshly on Ichigo’s cock, feeling where the kid arches, and where he quietens, doing it by the book. He swipes his thumb over the narrow slit, and feels building in his body, a feeling arching into his spine and nerves. Fuck.

 

He comes sooner than he’d think, tugging on Ichigo, biting into the hollow of his throat and spilling into the round of his hip. He moans, knowing too little about where it begins and where it ends, and thinking, dimly, when he simmers down, to hell with everything. Ichigo fucking _keens_ , rutting into Grimmjow’s tight grip on his dick. He whispers a mantra Grimmjow can’t hear, an ocean roaring in his ears, as if he wasn’t being poetical enough. And just before he comes, he stutters to silence and pinches his eyes shut. Grimmjow sighs, tightening the crook of his fingers, and licks lazily into Ichigo’s mouth. The kid can take credit for not screaming, and shudders out stutteringly into Grimmjow’s palm, spilling wetly with hips jerking.

 

They stay like that, and Grimmjow decides that he couldn’t give less. Ichigo doesn’t say anything, just mutters something that’s probably going to turn out to be an idiosyncratic Grimmjow will dig out of his head at some point. He’s somehow bridged a distance he didn’t even think he’d get to, past a load of crossroads and fucked up emotional record. Ichigo’s breath evens out, eventually, when Grimmjow doesn’t offer anything in return. He watches this kid, 77 out of 78, orange, undrafted, go to sleep with a chest that’s smooth in the pale illumination from the monitor.

 

 _I wasn’t about to die on you, you know. I know, but she won’t hear you_. At some point, it becomes statics, fading blackly.

 

He manages to fall asleep without Kotetsu’s pills, sinks into the cacophony of noises from Anchorage’s Shatterdome, dreaming white noise and of no sound at all.

 

*


End file.
